Chapter Sixteen: Two Souls Are Better Than One

Chapter Sixteen: Two Souls Are Better Than One

            The moon looked bold and bright in the ominous black sky. From the roof of the Tipton Hotel, Hades knew just from looking at it that this was the perfect evening to take over the world. The only problem was…how was he going to do it? He knew he should’ve asked the Fates what it was that they tried to warn him about. Maybe it had something to do with how he conquers everything, or maybe they were trying to alert him of any possible threats…like the Ghostbusters. That’d be impossible, because they were supposed to be destroyed before Hades became ruler; that was, if Jafar got the job done right.

All of these suspicions and thoughts made Hades feel extremely agitated. There were many ways this “master plan” could go right and many ways it could go wrong. It was one of the things that he hated about having overseers as advisors. Why couldn’t he have turned to someone a little less psychic? Like John Edwards?

“Uh, Hades?” he heard Panic call out for him. Just what he needed: one of his idiotic minions bugging him while lost in thought. “Did we give any of these soon-to-be-slaved mortals permission to come up here?”

Hades’ eyes scrunched up over the oddity of the question as he turned to face his minions. “What’re you morons talkin’ abo…?” He stopped as soon as he saw a scruffy-looking man with familiar yellow eyes on the rooftop with a beautiful brunette that he had one hand roughly clinging onto. The brunette looked frightened and struggled under the man’s grip; but, no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t escape from him. “O.K., I’m not the one to butt into anyone’s personal business, but if you two have marital problems, I suggest goin’ to Maury about it.”

“I need you, Hades,” the scruffy-looking man articulated.

The face of the Lord of the Dead registered a huge sense of awkwardness. “Alright…now I’m suggesting Jerry Springer.”

The man’s other hand was hiding behind his back the whole time he faced Hades; when he finally stuck it out, he revealed himself to be holding a staff with a green orb at the tip. “It’d be an impossible task to execute. But with my powers near complete rejuvenation, it should not be too difficult.”

Hades was still puzzled over whom this stranger was and what he was babbling about; however, that staff he held looked very familiar. Now that he thought of it, that woman he brought along with him looked familiar herself. “Listen…whatever ya want, buddy, you sure ain’t gonna find it up here.”

“On the contrary, Hades,” the man said before pointing the tip of the staff towards the Lord of the Dead, “Everything here is exactly what I want.”

The flames on Hades’ body grew as he glared at the man. “This is my moment of glory, not yours…Maleficent.”

The man grinned, tightening his grip on the staff, which slightly glowed at the tip. “I suppose there is no need to lengthen this ridiculous charade. So let us ‘cut to the chase,’ as these mortals say today.” He let go of the woman in his grasps, and she surprisingly remained where she was, not making any attempt whatsoever to escape. “Gods can be just as inhabitable as mortals for powerful spirits like me. They are also incredible boosts of energy…rare energy for ghosts.”

Hades chuckled. “Please. Okay? If you think that this body can be possessed by some storybook flunky, then you’re gravely mista—”

A long, familiar black tentacle suddenly wrapped around his body and squeezed him so tight that it prevented him from flaming up or even phasing. It was not any normal tentacle; it belonged to Ursula, who was posing as the woman Maleficent brought with her; the tentacle stuck out from under the long dark blue evening gown she wore in her human form. Hades tried to verbally assault her, but he found it extremely difficult to talk while being squeezed into the form of an hourglass.

Ursula crossed her arms and grinned at the subdued god of the underworld. “What do you say now, Hades?” It was Ursula talking, but the voice itself was masked to match the rest of the appearance. “Is this better than what you intended?” She squeezed harder and Hades squawked in pain. “I told you that I deserved some payback for rescuing your pathetic afterlife. And now I’m going to get it…through Maleficent.”

The eyes of Hades darted from Ursula to Maleficent, whose eyes and mouth began to glow in a bright yellowish hue through the taxi driver’s body. A haze of ghostly energy then seeped out, hovered through the air, and entered into the open mouth of Hades. The underworld god’s mouth and eyes then glowed themselves, as did the rest of his body, which Ursula removed her grasp over soon afterwards; it flamed up again, only this time the fire wasn’t orange or blue—it was a bizarre shade of green.

Nathaniel, the once-possessed taxi driver, was on the verge of collapsing; but Ursula’s tentacle wrapped around his waist and propped him up, long enough for Maleficent (in Hades’ body) to walk up and take her staff from his hands. As she held the staff in Hades’ chilling blue hands, the green orb at the tip glowed brighter than it ever had before. The unimaginable happened: a god possessed by a spirit. It was enough to be something greater than even Zeus himself—should he ever try to stop her. Then again, her powers had always gone unnoticed by the gods with the obvious exception of Hades; it was that dark link she had to him that made him such a suitable subject for this possession.

“You should have listened to the Fates, Hades,” Maleficent advised, her regular voice like an echo overlapping his. “They tried to tell you that it just wasn’t you controlling this realm. It was both of us…together.”

Maleficent looked towards Hades’ throne, which Pain and Panic were cowering behind, after witnessing the possession; she focused on them while approaching it, her staff like a lantern guiding her through the eerie darkness. It was Panic who (living up to his name) broke down and cried out for mercy, “Don’t hurt us! Please!”

Pain had done just the same soon after him. “We’ll do anything! We’re not completely useless!”

The face of Hades reflected Maleficent’s amusement over their pathetic pleas. “No…you’re not,” she said.

Suddenly, the small, frail bodies of Pain and Panic glowed in a bright greenish color as they were lifted off the floor. They squirmed to no avail but soon weren’t moving at all, once their arms and legs transformed into hard, cold stone. The two minions screamed while the rest of their bodies turned to rock. When their mouths finally transformed, their screams were silenced.

They resembled gargoyles—scared gargoyles—in the current state they were in. If they were still conscious of what happened to them, then they were undoubtedly still crying in pain. With the power of her staff, Maleficent set the stoned figures at the edge of the rooftop where they faced the entire New York skyline, looking no different than any of the others around the city.

After Hades’ minions were taken care of, Ursula turned to the taxi driver she had been propping up with her tentacle. “What shall we do with this one?”

Maleficent looked at the man and sneered at him. “Dispose of him in any way you see fit. He’s no longer any use to us.”

“There’s only one way to truly dispose of human filth like this,” said Ursula, who then afterwards tossed the man over the edge, sending him falling several stories to his death.

Not once acknowledging the evil act committed by the Sea Witch, Maleficent kept her focus solely on Hades’ throne. Standing right in front of it, she raised her staff high above Hades’ head and then, with incredible force, jabbed it directly into the throne. “Tonight…a new era begins,” she said, as the throne and everything else on the Tipton Hotel’s rooftop began to glow in a greenish hue.

-----------------

“You know, there are a million taxi drivers all around New York City,” said an impatient Natalie. “How do we intend on finding one with yellow eyes and the personality of Joan Crawford?”

J.G. wasn’t listening to a word that she was saying, too heavily focused on the road and each individual taxicab that they passed by. “¡Ah, mi Dios! ¡Espera, mi amor! ¡Vengo!” The others in the Volvo exchanged awkward glances as he talked to himself in Spanish.

“What did he say?” Genevieve inquired.

“Something about loving pizza…I dunno,” Natalie remarked.

Stantz made a hard left turn at the next corner, causing his passengers to have their faces pressed up against the windows. Several passing vehicles honked at him in the process as he nearly collided head-on with them. Once they were steady on the road again, the others unstuck their faces from the window and frowned at J.G.

“Jay! Relax, man!” Jacqueline cried. “Your girlfriend isn’t the only thing at stake here, alright? In case you’ve forgotten, Hades is only minutes away from wiping out our entire universe.”

J.G. took a deep breath. “I know. O.K.? She…She’s the best thing that ever came into my life.” He heard Natalie scoffing behind him and, needless to say, was greatly offended. “You know, you guys just don’t get what it’s like to be truly in love with some—”

CRASH!

As they passed through the Tipton Hotel, the body of a man crashed on top of a vehicle, causing it to swerve out of control and collide with two parked cars. Witnessing this dreadful accident first-hand, J.G. slammed on the brakes and stopped the Volvo in the middle of the street, just as other vehicles had done the same. A massive traffic jam was formed in less than a second, several cars honking at one another; and in the center of it all were the Ghostbusters, who climbed out of the Volvo and looked high up at the Tipton complex.

“You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!” Natalie bellowed.

At the very top of the building, there was an ominous green glow of light that started to spread to the rest of the building. Thick thorns formed around the building, some coming out through windows and looping over others. The people inside the hotel ran out in panic over this strange occurrence, gathering with the crowd that had already assembled on the street.

Mr. Moseby, Maddie, London, Carey, Arwin, and Zack were one of the many that had made it out. Genevieve noticed them almost immediately and got a strong sense of déjà vu. This whole incident was just a reminiscent of the one in 2004 with the arrival of Gozer; the only major difference was the green glow and the bundles of thorns shrouded around the building.

“No doubt this is where our gal, Maleficent, is hiding,” Natalie deduced before reaching into the Volvo for her Proton Pack and putting it on. “Well, team, we’ve been through this song and dance before.”

“Yeah, only this time it’s a different tune,” Jacqueline added as she, Spengler, Stantz, and Genevieve placed their Proton Packs on also. “I still say we should get out of dodge, while we’ve still got our lives.”

Natalie shook her head and grinned. “Four years of being a Ghostbuster and you still wanna chicken out? You’re no fun anymore.” Jacqueline gave her a dirty look while detaching her particle thrower from the pack.

“Well, I’m not chickening out of this,” J.G. boldly declared. “That flame-headed monster is keeping Vanessa up there, and I intend on getting her out, safe and unharmed.”

Sean aimed his P.K.E. Meter towards the thorn-shrouded Tipton Hotel. The levels he received from it were way higher than the usual ones from Maleficent. He could only deduce that the extra amounts of psycho-kinetic energy came from the thorns themselves. “Those thorns are wracked with strong, and presumably negative, waves of P.K.E.,” he informed.

“Let’s just skip all the small talk and blast it away, shall we?” Natalie suggested, already aiming her particle thrower at the front entrance.

The others did the same and, without notice, fired at the thorns blocking the entrance, which brought great amazement out of the nearby onlookers, who were witnessing the first act of heroism from the team in a whole year. Their streams hit the thorns for minutes, but not a single one dented, scratched, or snapped on impact. After a few seconds more, the Ghostbusters turned to each other and shook their heads, signaling for a ceasefire. They switched off their throwers in defeat and gazed on the smoking thorns that continued to cover the entrance.

Now this started to resemble the 2007 incident at the Museum of Natural History with Vigo the Carpathian, as he covered the entire museum in an impenetrable shell made out of slime. Genevieve seriously doubted if Lady Liberty could save them from this situation. “This is quite a catastrophe,” she commented.

“There’s gotta be some way to penetrate these thorns,” J.G. implored.

Genevieve walked right up to the blocked entrance, closely studying the thorns. “What if we just climbed up them?”

“I’d highly decide against making physical contact with them,” Spengler remarked.

“Yeah, especially with no gloves,” Natalie added.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Genevieve stated. “Just avoid the areas on the branches that have…” As she reached up to grab one of the branches to prove her point, she was suddenly stricken by a thorn, leaving a bleeding gash right across her left palm. “Ah, shoot!”

The others ran up to check on her, J.G. being the first one to approach with more concern than he had been showing the past hours over his girlfriend. “You okay?” he asked.

“Hurts like heck, but I’m cool,” Genevieve acknowledged, slightly wincing as J.G. pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped it around her wound.

Suddenly, they heard a weird pulsing noise and felt a tremendous quake beneath their feet as the Tipton building unleashed a wave of psycho-kinetic energy all throughout the city. In mere seconds, it was all illuminated in the same greenish hue that covered the Tipton; the only exceptions were the citizens of New York, who stood out from the eerie shade of the color; however, it wasn’t for very long. One by one, the eyes of the New York citizens (including the residents of the Tipton Hotel) glowed green themselves, falling under the spell created by Maleficent. Their bodies went rigid, and their fists clenched, walking like zombies towards Genevieve and the Ghostbusters.

Genevieve’s eyes widened in horror, seeing the eerie display with her teammates.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” she suggested. “We’ve gotta get away, before they…” She felt herself being restrained and realized that Venkman, Spengler, Stantz, and Zeddemore were individually clasping onto both of her arms. Before she could inquire as to what they were doing, she realized that their eyes were glowing just like everyone else. They’re under her spell, she thought in despair as she struggled under their heavy grasps.

As the cursed New York citizens came closer, Genevieve devised the best plan of action she could. Since her legs weren’t subdued like her arms, she stomped on each of the Ghostbusters’ feet, causing them to instantly release their hold over her. She then dashed in the direction that the cursed people weren’t blocking, running away from the haunted area. They followed after her, some of them running themselves to avoid losing track of her. It intrigued her that, despite being influenced by Maleficent’s power, these people still had some common sense in them.

While running for her life, she thought about something even more bizarre about all of this: the fact that she wasn’t under the spell. At first, she had no good deduction for it; but, as she felt the unbearable pain in her hand, she began to wonder if getting cut from the thorn made her immune to Maleficent’s power. If that would be the case, then it might as well be considered a setback in her plans…or a backup, in case a mortal were to come in contact with them. Whatever the case might’ve been, she was the only being left unaffected by the supernatural outbreak.

For a quick second, she looked back to see how far she was able to distance herself from her pursuers. Ironically, it was only the Ghostbusters that were closing in on her. From her standpoint, they were the healthiest people in the city. Maybe all those years of ghost-busting makes a body good, she thought. Even though this was looking hopeless by the minute, she actually did have a plan formulating in her head, and it involved getting her teammates’ heads back on straight. She only hoped her legs wouldn’t turn to spaghetti before she could reach what was left of the firehouse.